Interracial Relationships and the Economy of Power in Modern Empires

Abstract

Just as the ancient empires were based on cultural, ideological, and administrative syncretism, so modern colonial representations and systems of rule are similarly profoundly syncretistic. Borrowing from both ancient and contemporary modes of representation and control has enabled the creation of a hybrid, multi-layered discourse and means of domination.1 In the sixteenth century the Spaniards, who vanquished the Incas and Aztecs, took the ancient European empires as their models. Like Alexander the Great in Persia or the Ptolemies in Egypt or, later, the Romans in Britannia, Gaul, and North Africa, the Spanish in the Americas used the native elites to validate and consolidate their rule. In Peru, for instance, the Spanish employed the curaca as mediators and tax collectors (Ramírez 1996; Mabry 2002). Similarly, in the nineteenth century, both Britain and France, taking the ancient Greeks and Romans as imperial models, used the colonized elites as intermediaries in order to maintain their control over the native populations. Thus, as in the Greek and Roman empires where the local elites were incorporated into the imperial system, so, too, within modern empires the indigenous aristocracy participated in colonial rule in ways that gave this rule a hybrid cast.KeywordsColonial RuleInterracial MarriageEast India CompanyFrench ColonialMixed MarriageThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.